Sir, – The Irish housing crisis is no longer just a matter of supply and demand, it’s now a crisis of accountability. As the Government abandons annual housing targets, the mantra “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” rings truer than ever.

The same logic applies to those who profit from the chaos: housebuilders, estate agents and developers. These actors will thrive in a market where the rules are opaque and the metrics are missing.

When there are no clear targets for affordable or social housing, and when the influence of large-scale investors goes unchecked, the market becomes a playground for those who can exploit the gaps.

The result? Ordinary people are left competing for crumbs, while the sellers of housing, whether through sales, rentals or development, manage to profit while the Government ignores the broader social cost by having no set annual targets to assess progress or its absence.

If you won’t target the impact of institutional buyers, you need not manage their influence. If you won’t target the availability of housing for families, you can evade thorough responsibility for the homelessness crisis.

And if you won’t measure the place of builders and developers in driving up prices or limiting supply, you need not hold them accountable.

Instead, we have an administration that is committed to the facade of better days down the road.

Unless we have transparency and annual, measurable outcomes, the housing market will remain a game where only builders and developers win and we continue to experience the astonishing housebuilding failures of the government parties. – Yours, etc,

DR FINIAN FALLON,

Newmarket Square,

Dublin 8.

Sir, – The Government’s plan for housing, stripped of targets, is not a plan at all – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. To say that targets “can become a distraction” is laughable. It treats the people of this country as fools.

In every home, on every farm, and in every small business, people make plans and set goals. They do it because that’s how things get done.